1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to improvements m monitoring and managing agents and telephone call activity in telephone call centers.
2. Background of Related Art
Telephone call centers (or call centers) are networked groups of telephone operators or xe2x80x9cagentsxe2x80x9d that provide customer service for telephone callers. Call centers can be in many different forms, from large Operator Service Systems (OSSs) under the control of telephone companies to smaller is private ones such as corporate customer service centers and telemarketing groups.
An important function of a call center is to provide efficient service to all customers, including timely and satisfactory handling of all received calls. Prior art automatic call distribution (ACD) systems are software-hardware hybrids for helping to efficiently switch incoming telephone calls to suitable and available operators. Notwithstanding the use of an ACD system, a call center has one or more human managers monitoring all or a designated portion of the calls received and handled by it.
Call center agents are often grouped according to xe2x80x9csplits.xe2x80x9d A split can be a type of service provided during a telephone call or a type of skill possessed by an agent. For example, one split might handle credit card orders, another might handle customer complaints, and yet another split might handle technical support. A split manager monitors the calls received by a split and either assigns calls or overrides the ACD system when thought necessary. In addition to assigning calls or overriding the ACD, the manager often adjusts the parameters of the ACD to influence the ACD behavior. For example, the manager could assign some back-up agents to work in a busy ACD.
A manager may be responsible for more than one split, and even all splits in some call centers. It is also possible that a multi-skilled agent can work in more than one split. In some instances, a split manager might like to have information about other splits of the call center while assigning calls to his or her agents.
Prior art call centers often employ bar graph displays such as the one shown in FIG. 1 to allow managers to monitor the present and cumulative activities of a split. For example, the number of calls waiting to be processed by a split might be tracked, as well as many other data to be tracked, such as how many calls were abandoned (hang-ups perhaps due to customer waiting fatigue), or the duration of the oldest call on hold.
In prior art systems, a manager wishing to monitor many splits simultaneously must inevitably overlap at least some of the split displays because of practical limitations on monitor sizes. Thus, in order to view all of the splits, the manager must xe2x80x9ctogglexe2x80x9d between different displays by a series of keystrokes. However, this toggling requirement makes it difficult to make good comparisons, since the manager must remember and mentally integrate information from multiple displays.
Accordingly, what is lacking in the prior art is an efficient call center monitoring system for convenient viewing of multiple split activity details.
In view of the above-identified problems and limitations of the prior art, the present invention provides a method of displaying telephone call center split activity and status information at least including the steps of:
predefining a plurality of splits for activity monitoring;
via split activity monitors, monitoring predefined splits for call processing activity and outputting data reflective of the telephone call processing activity;
combining data received from the split activity monitors and outputting a combined split activity signal;
via a three-dimensional (3-D) graph generator coupled to the split activity data combiner, outputting a series of 3-D graphs, each graph representing a combination of multiple split activity data; and
displaying 3-D graphs output from the 3-D graph generator.
The present invention also provides, a telephone call center split activity and status information monitoring and display system at least including:
a plurality of split activity monitors, reach adapted to monitor a split for telephone call processing activity, and for outputting data reflective of the telephone call processing activity;
a split activity data combiner coupled to the split activity monitors, the split activity data combiner adapted to combine data received from the split activity monitors and output a combined split activity signal;
a 3-D graph generator coupled to the split activity data combiner, the 3-D graph generator adapted to output a series of 3-D graphs, each graph representing a combination of multiple split activity data;
a user input/output (I/O) device coupled to the 3-D graph generator;
a display coupled to the user I/O device adapted to display 3-D graphs output from the 3-D graph generator; and
a controller coupled to the split activity monitors, the split activity data combiner, the 3-D graph generator, and the user I/O device, the controller adapted to control the operation of the system.